Judith Heilbronn-Crown UKCPS Gold

I have been drawing and painting since I was child. I did Art to A-level at school, but have had no formal art education after that so am mostly self-taught. I mainly draw landscapes, and flowers, but recently have also started to draw animals and birds from my own photographs. Flowers are drawn as "portraits" - I like to have them on my table and draw them before they change! I use a Panasonic digital camera for most of my photographs, but also have an Olympus mju for rainy days. I take a lot of photos so there are always plenty of landscapes (etc) to choose from.... mostly from places such as Newtonmore in Scotland or Cornwall... I love ambling in beautiful places.

At the moment I mainly use coloured pencils because they are so convenient, and pleasant to use, - though they are time consuming and even an A4 picture may take a few weeks to complete. I draw/paint in the evenings on a table in the "visitors' bedroom" My coloured pencils are a mixture of Derwent, Faber-Castell Albrecht Durer, and Caran d'Ache. I try to stick to only the lightfast colours in those ranges. I have not yet decided which is my favourite support.

I did the illustrations for the gardening column of our local newspaper for a few years, and have done the illustrations for a few books